


Lomesome Heroine

by ruric



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Community_comment_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-20
Updated: 2009-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara’s never given up on anything in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lomesome Heroine

Kara’s locker contains almost nothing. 

A life on Caprica, years spent out here searching for a new home, and she has very little to show for her existence. 

A couple of changes of uniform hang from hooks and a there’s crumpled, dog eared photograph stuck to the inside of the door of her with Zak and Lee, arms around each other smiling, young, dumb and not knowing the horrors waiting for them. Looped over the square mirror is the necklace Sam gave her just after they were married and tucked into a folded piece of paper a small curl of bright blonde hair, memories of a child she’s wished with all her heart could be hers. The glint of the silver pocket knife, sitting on top of one of her black vests, she carried from New Caprica and it’s still with her.

She doesn’t need possessions to remind her of her dreams and nightmares – she’s always held them close, in mind and heart and in the ink decorating her skin.

Kara’s never given up on anything in her life.

She doesn’t know if she was born this way, doesn’t know where she gets the bloody mindedness that makes her hang on and fight tooth and nail for what she wants and believes in.

Knock her down and she’ll get back up, spitting curses through bloodied teeth. 

Leoben learned that on New Caprica. 

She’d been drawn to him the first time she met him, seeing something inside a machine, a skin job, she’d recognised. He’d played her, played her all the way through the interrogation but there’d been something in the way he looked at her. He was the first person to look at her like he knew her, like he saw all of her. And Laura had spaced him.

They hadn’t known then about resurrection. 

She’d never expected to see him again – and she’d gods damned sure never expected to see him in her dreams, or delusions, of her old apartment in Delphi. Never expected to hear his voice soft and hushed talking to her of destinies and the future or to feel his hands, as real as any man’s on her body, the weight of him pressing her down into the floor, slickness of paint under her back and on her hands. 

Hope had kept her alive on New Caprica - hope that she’d get out and get away. Every time she’d plunged the weapon into Leoben’s body and felt his blood spill hotly over her hands she’d smiled. Because she’d keep on doing it until he stopped coming back. She’d fought his soft words and promises, fought the parody of domestic bliss he’d tried to create because she knew it wasn’t real. 

She’s always known who and what she was until she went down to Earth and found the Viper.

She’d known what she was right up until she’d until she pulled away the wreckage and helmet, and found a body with a shock of blonde hair wearing her tags.

She’d known what she was until she’d seen Leoben pale and shaken stumble a step then two backwards and turn walk away from her.

Closing her eyes she tries to shut out the memories that won’t go away. 

Sam lies down in the infirmary, and he’s gone according to the medics. But she won’t believe that either until she hears the last breath rattle out his chest.

“What am I?”

She counts her breaths, counts the beats of her heart until she feels his hands close on her shoulders and his breath whisper against the back of her neck.

“I don’t know.”

Kara opens her eyes and looks at his face in the mirror.

He used to look at her with hope. With heat and hunger, the light shining from his eyes when he’d try to convince her what he believed.

Now Leoben’s eyes are empty. 

Kara looks at him and sees nothing but the hopelessness of her own gaze reflected back at her.

She looks at her reflection in the mirror and sees a woman she no longer knows.


End file.
